


Welcome to Steelport

by Kingofthenerdz



Series: Now and Then [3]
Category: Saints Row
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7671445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kingofthenerdz/pseuds/Kingofthenerdz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot can happen in five years. Between taking down Killbane and Zinyak invading the Earth, Am has a lot of time to get up to crazy adventures. A collection of oneshots that take place between SR3+4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sex Tape

**Author's Note:**

> Ben freaks out because Am has no shame over her past sexcapades.

“Boss, we’ve got a serious problem.” Ben announced, walking into her office. It wasn’t even 9am yet and no one had brought her coffee, so putting up with whatever it was that had Ben’s panties in a bunch this morning was not going to come easily.

“Ben, everything is a serious problem with you. You need to chill out. This election is pretty much won by now.” Someone put a cup of coffee on her desk, almost as if they had read her mind. It was black and unsweetened and she sighed because of it. She missed having Shaundi bring her coffee. At least she knew that Am loved any fancy iced concoction that was full of weird sugary syrups. And don’t even get her started on pumpkin spiced lattes…

“This could pretty much hand Hughes the win.” Am rolled her eyes at the mention of that woman.

“I very much doubt that.”

“Someone said they have a sex tape. Of you.” Am laughed. She had been expecting this and it was quite overdue.

“Which one?” Ben’s eyes pretty much bulged out of his head.

“Which one?! What do you mean which one!?” He shouted at her and she just leaned back in her chair, propping her legs up on the table.

“There’s definitely two. Maybe three, but I’m not sure about the last one.”

“How are you so calm about this?!” He sat himself down across from her, clearly trying to calm himself.

“Because they threaten to release it like twice a year, try to get money out of me, I tell them that I don’t care and they leave it. Honestly, just ignore them. They won’t do anything.”

“This is a serious problem, Boss!” He slammed his fist on the table, trying to get his point across.

“It really isn’t. They give you a phone number or an email address this time?” He just looked at her in complete shock.

“What’s on your mind, Ben?” She took her legs off the table and leaned toward him.

“I just… How did this even happen?”

“When a man or a woman loves a woman very much…” She started, smirking. Ben just shook his head at her.

“Playa, I don’t want the sex talk from you.”

“How do you think it happened? I was young and stupid and forgot that there are cameras in public places.” Ben just groaned and put his head in his hands. Amwas very much enjoying this. She always forgot how little shame she really had when it came to sex and how uncomfortable it made other people.

“You forgot there were cameras…” He echoed back to her, still in shock. Am just shrugged.

“Ben, we’ve all done it. Grow up.” She picked up her phone and motioned for him to pass her the paper with the phone number on it. He glared at her as she typed in digits and held the phone up to her ear. After three rings, the man on the other end picked up.

“You ready to talk figures?”

“It’s nice to hear from you again. I thought this year you’d finally give this up.”

“I had to wait until the perfect moment.”

“And my answer still hasn’t changed. I still don’t care. In fact, you should release them and we’ll spilt the profits.” She could see Ben waving his arms at her and making hand gestures, but she spun around in her chair to ignore him.

“…What?”

“They’re shitty videos anyway, so we probably wouldn’t make that much money, but then again I could release the names of the other people in them, that could bag us a little more in public interest…”

“I…”

“…You can barely even tell that it’s me, so I don’t think it would sell all that well. I think I’d do better getting it professionally done, you know proper lighting and makeup and stuff….”

“Okay, okay!” Am smiled. She knew this was coming.

“So you’ll stop trying to blackmail the future President of the United States?”

“Yes. I’ll stop.”

“Good boy. I’ll talk to you in six months.” She put the phone down on him and turned back to Ben.

“See, no big deal.”

“I’m still trying to process what just happened.”

“It’s just some guy who lives in his mom’s basement who was scanning security cameras for dirt on high profile people in Stilwater. I wasn’t even who he was looking for.”

“Then who was he looking for?” Am bit her lip. He’d been the only person who had publicly acknowledged that he knew about her arrangement with Troy. But she wasn’t about to tell Ben that. She obviously couldn’t just show up at his apartment or meet him out of work, so they’d arrange to meet in places they couldn’t get caught. Or so they thought.

“He’s dead, it doesn’t matter.” Ben raised an eyebrow at her.

“And the other person?” Johnny. Now that one had been super careless, but it always was with him. They’d run out of surfaces in Purgatory and both their houses so they’d taken to finding new places around Stilwater.

“Dead. Are you seeing a pattern here?”

“That you’re either a real life black widow, or you have really shitty luck.”

“I try not to think about it too much.” Am stood. “So can we get on with some actual work, or are we going to sit here discussing my sex life all day?”


	2. International Booty Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt's turned his life around. He's got a job with MI6! But once again, he's being dragged back into gang warfare...

“So. We need to discuss our next move against Cyrus Temple.” His manager was pacing as he spoke to the room. They’d been tracking him, but he’d taken so much tech when he’d disappeared, he’d been managing to evade them so far. They were all getting pretty desperate, trying to find any way to take him down.

“What about the Saints?” He said quietly, looking at the floor.

“What about them?” His manager snapped at him. He was not a nice man, and hadn’t been briefed on Matt’s history when he had joined this team. All he knew about him is that he was good with computers.

“They stopped him. They might know something.” His manager raised an eyebrow at him.

“How would we even get into contact with them? Their leader is notoriously hard to get hold of, and she probably wouldn’t even work with this government anyway!”

“I have her phone number.”

“…What? How?” The older man stopped, taken aback

“She gave it to me.” The room burst into whispers at that, and Matt knew that rumours would be circulating for the next few weeks. But at this point they were too desperate to deny any help.

“You know what, I’m not even going to go into why- You really think it’ll work?” Matt nodded. “Great. It’s your job on the line here kid. Call her.”

 

Pulling the phone out of his pocket, he thought about the last time they’d spoken. After everything that happened in Steelport, he’d gotten the first plane out of America and laid low for a while. Somehow- though he assumed it had something to do with Kinzie- she had called to check up on him. It was one of the weirder conversations that he’d had, but she’d offered him a chance to work with her. Said he had a good work ethic, he just didn’t make a good gang leader. When he’d declined, she just told him to keep her number.

 

He connected the phone to the speaker and dialled. It rang for a minute, and he was starting to think that she wouldn’t pick up but the line clicked.

 

“This better be good, Matt.” Her voice rang out across the room. What time was it over there? Too late to be calling, he knew that for sure. The agents around the room were stunned into silence. He was just a kid to them; they knew nothing about what had happened in Steelport, and for good reason. He didn’t want to be known as the one who used to be a cyber terrorist, he wanted to turn his life around and actually do some good. He’d already almost messed that up on the first day when someone had seen his Nyte Blade notebook.

“Yes! It is. I need to ask a favour-” His manager was nodding at him to continue, but a man screaming in the background cut him off.

“A favour?” She sounded intrigued, but another scream made him falter.

“…What are you doing?”

“Spring cleaning.” A single gunshot, and the screaming stopped.

“Do I want to know?”

“Probably not.”

“Anyway, about that favour….” He could hear someone shouting in the background, and it took a moment for him to hear what they were saying.

“Boss, they’re coming!”

“Ah, shit. Hang on Matt.” Matt shrugged at the agents in the room with him and turned to his laptop, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder. It only took him a few seconds to pinpoint her location, and only a few more to hack into the cameras at the club.

 

Police were storming the building, and there were Saints everywhere defending their positions.

“What’s going on?”

“New Chief got this fucking stupid idea in his head that he wanted to clean up the city. Starting with us.” Matt watched the cameras as Shaundi threw her a gun and they both turned to rain bullets down on the men that were running down the stairs of the main area. She was shooting with one hand, phone in the other. His co-workers had moved behind him and were watching her intently. Most of them would have never seen her in action before, and he had to admit- it was pretty impressive to watch. She was like a one-man army, and had the body count to match. He heard one of them let out a low whistle as she moved, making a lewd comment that Matt wished he hadn’t heard.

“Are you watching me?” She sounded amused, turning to face one of the cameras and waving coyly. Blowing him a kiss, she turned back and tackled someone, knocking them to the floor.

“That comment better have not been from you, because an international booty call was not on my to-do list today.” Matt could feel his face going bright red, and he wished he wasn’t in a room full of people having to do this right now.

“No!” She laughed, smirking at the cameras pausing her movements for a moment.

“I would eat you alive.” He choked then, wishing he could melt into the floor. She laughed again, clearly enjoying this.

“Don’t worry honey, you’re not my type. Unless MI6 have figured out a way to make you age like fifteen years in the last two… Then we’d talk.”

“How did you- Oh. Kinzie?”

“I like to keep tabs on people I left alive.” Taking a knife off of one of the tables, she slammed it into the head of one of the officers who had advanced on her while she spoke to him.

“You think that’s all of them?” She shouted across the room, and Pierce shouted something back at her that Matt couldn’t hear. One of the bodies moved, and Matt shouted to warn her, but it was too late as a gunshot rang out. The room went silent and the Boss froze, her face screwed up. Reaching up, she touched her hand to her shoulder and brought it away covered in blood.

“Excuse me, Matt. I have to deal with something.” She was too calm for a person who’d just been shot. Putting the phone down on the nearest surface, she walked toward the man who had pulled the trigger. The cameras didn’t catch the look on her face, but from the expression on the poor man’s face- Matt assumed that he didn’t want to know. She extended her leg and pressed her heel into his neck, pressing down. She allowed herself a second, and then completely lost it.

 

“That was fucking Chanel, you motherfucker!” She shouted, stamping on the man’s head. Matt looked away from the cameras the moment his head caved in, wishing he hadn’t seen what just happened. He didn’t look again until he heard her picking up the phone once more.

“Honestly, no respect for labels. You’d think he’d aim somewhere that would actually do something more than just piss me off.”

“You’ve been shot!” Matt exclaimed in horror, watching as she peeled off her top to inspect the wound.

“It doesn’t hurt that much.”

“But you’ve been shot!” He couldn’t understand why she was so blasé about this. If he had a bullet in his shoulder, he’d be screaming in agony on the floor.

“Honey when you’ve been blown to shit on a boat, nothing really hurts that bad anymore. Or maybe they fucked up my nerves when I was in a coma. I don’t know.” She jumped up on a table as someone ran over with a first aid kit. He gulped as he watched her, trying not to focus on the fact that she was half naked, because _Jesus Christ Matt, she’s a scary psychopath- why are you looking at her boobs_?

“I swear to god, I don’t have a single pair of loubs that don’t have blood all over them. It’s like they pick the day I wear them and go- ‘hey, today’s the day we’ll try to kill her!’ I’m honestly sick of it.” She was complaining to Shaundi who was laughing at her, and Matt cleared his throat to remind her that he was still on the other end of the phone.

“I’m flying over later today, can we meet?”

“Meet me by the church tomorrow, we can talk then.” The phone clicked off and Matt exited the cameras, turning back to his colleagues, who were just staring at him in shock.

 

- 

 

He didn’t even stick around to explain. He’d left the building and booked on the first plane to Stilwater. He’d been obsessed with the rise of the Stilwater Butcher when he was younger, but he’d never actually got a chance to go to the city. Had thirteen year old Matt known that in a few short years he would’ve met and almost been killed by the person he’d been reading about for years, he would’ve probably freaked out. He knew all about the positive influence the Saints had had on the city itself. Homelessness and poverty were down. There was a housing boom with new and affordable properties being built and affordable mortgages meant that thousands of people had real homes that were in place of what were- for lack of a better word- slums before the revitalisation had happened. Stilwater University had flourished and had become one of the best in the country. Money was being poured back into the city and instead of making Ultor executives richer, the people of Stilwater were benefiting greatly. Not bad for a street gang.

 

He had a hunch he knew exactly which church she had meant, and was glad to see her standing there waiting for him. He took a moment to take in the church. He’d seen the pictures from before Ultor had cleaned it up, and he understood why she’d picked here to meet. She was an intelligent woman, she must’ve known he had a fascination with her past, but actually being here was starting to sink in now. This is where this now world-famous gang had started. Right on the steps of this church.

Jogging across the road, he approached her. She turned and smiled at him.

“Matt Miller. We meet at last.” Reaching out her hand, he took it and shook it. Shaking off the image of the man with the caved in skull, he nodded.

“So what do MI6 want with me?” She was still smiling, and he knew from the look on her face that she wouldn’t be saying no to what he had to offer.


	3. Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Hope"

She was supposed to feel something, wasn’t she? 

She was looking at the peeling paper on the ceiling. The apartment was shitty, but it wasn’t the worst place she’d ever had to call home. She could hear Pierce’s snores from her position on the other couch, and she tilted her head to watch him sleep. 

She’d insisted that Shaundi take the bed, seeing as she knew she wouldn’t be using it. The poor woman was exhausted, so Am didn’t blame her for crashing as soon as she put her head on the pillows. The plane incident had made Shaundi furious, and Am knew she should feel the same, but she felt nothing.

She’d lost the first man she’d ever loved and she couldn’t feel anything.

Sitting up, she grabbed her shoes. It was all she could think about, but she still couldn’t feel anything. When Lin had died, she had seen red. She had dragged herself out of that river and murdered Sharp slowly and painfully, her anger dragging out his suffering for as long as he could take it. People had watched in horror from the other side of the road as she drove into his car, overturning it. She’d dragged him out and taken her time in deciding what to do with him, putting a bullet in each of his knees to stop him from running. She’d been so angry, but that anger evaded her now. She was just… Empty. 

* * *

Pierce had insisted on a party. She hadn’t really wanted to celebrate taking over Steelport, but she had to keep pretending that she was okay. People kept pressing drinks and drugs into her hands, and she’d thank them, but she was putting them down when they turned away. She wasn’t in the mood to get fucked up tonight. 

They’d brought down the Syndicate and found nothing. She’d let them bury an empty coffin, with the promise that they’d recover his body and give him a proper send off. 

She had gone outside to stand on the helipad. She was less likely to be disturbed here. Not like people liked to disturb her anyway.

Am sighed. Taking over Stilwater had felt amazing. Like the best high she’d ever felt, and she’d ridden it for weeks. But this still didn’t make her feel anything. She’d accomplished so much in six months. Taking down three gangs and the army was no easy feat. The fucking _army_. She could almost hear Johnny’s laugh, boasting about how many guys he took out single-handedly. 

She looked to the side, forgetting for a moment that her best friend wasn’t next to her. And then it hit her. 

He was really gone.

She had been numb since he died, and she had never even shed a tear for him. Not even when they buried him.

She let out a choked sob as she looked out over her city.

* * *

They were in the middle of nowhere, somewhere along the coast. She couldn’t remember, and every city was blurring into one big super city because of the speed they’d been racing through them. The motel was shittier than it’d looked when they’d booked it. Ben had been lamenting the lack of an office all day, and Am had just rolled her eyes at him. It was just a place to sleep after all. Tomorrow they’d go to the rally and get straight back on the road.

She looked out at the sea from her window, deciding that a walk would be a good idea. The motel was right on the beach, so as she stepped out of the backdoor, she could feel the sand between her toes, still warm from the day’s heat. There were no lights down the beach, so she walked carefully through the darkness until she reached the ocean. 

Looking around, she made sure she was alone before stepping into the water. It was cooler than she thought it would be, a nice contrast to the sticky night. 

The waves lapped at her feet as she walked further into the surf. Closing her eyes, the soft breeze washed over her, causing her curls to fall over her shoulders.

There was a nudging feeling in her chest, and she almost ignored it. Until she realised that the horrible numb feeling that she’d been consumed by for the last two years was gone. 

She was thinking about the future, and for the first time since Johnny’s death, she felt happy.


	4. A Kiss On The Forehead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "A kiss on the forehead"

The headache from the NEMO chair had followed her the whole way home. She needed a glass of wine and a cigarette, she knew that much. She didn’t even smoke, but her body was screaming out for the relief that it would bring her. Maybe if she let herself have those things she might actually be able to sleep tonight.

Shaundi was stretched out on one of the sofas when she entered the penthouse, her breathing soft and rhythmic as she slept, completely unaware that Am had returned. Am watched her for a few moments, looking fondly down at this woman she now considered a little sister. She’d been where Shaundi had, and she knew how hard it was being so angry all the time. She was glad that she was at peace for the moment, even though tomorrow when she woke up, she would be straight back out, looking for blood. Am knew that she needed to talk to her soon, before she got out of hand. Walking the line between sanity and insanity was hard, and Shaundi was beginning to tip over the edge. Am wished that she could feel the way Shaundi was, but it had been months and she still felt numb. Sighing, she picked up one of the blankets. The least she could do was make sure she was comfortable.

Gently throwing the blanket over Shaundi, Am watched as she stirred slightly, turning over in her sleep. She muttered something that Am couldn’t quite catch, and Am knelt down next to her. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

_“It’s okay.”_ She whispered in French. “ _The Deckers are no more. We’ll make Killbane pay too.”_

Shaundi smiled at Am’s voice, but Am knew that she probably didn’t know what she said. Standing back up, Am walked over to the helipad, picking up a bottle of wine along the way. Glancing back at the sleeping form of her friend, she sighed again. She was a woman of her word. Steelport must pay for what happened to Johnny, and they were so close now. When that happened, Am hoped that Shaundi would be able to calm down. She hated seeing her friend in pain.


End file.
